ENVIRONMENTAL ENRICHMENT

MATCHING SPACES TO HOW OUR BODIES
EVOLVED TO PERCEIVE THEM

ENVIRONMENTAL ENRICHMENT


When you lack physical stimuli in your environment, your brain does not develop fully, making you have less resilience. In an enriched environment, you are less likely to get ill, recover quicker from diseases and are more likely to get older. 

FIVE INFORMATION PATHS / STIMULI


But how do you make a space Enriching? An enriched space is an environment that communicates with the body at at 5 different levels:

MOTOR
VISUAL
COGNITION
SOMATOSENSORY
CIRCADIAN RHYTHM

What these are  is explained per element.

VISUAL


ORRIENTATION

When we walk through a space, we create a mind map for navigation. Remarkable spatial objects like church towers, trees, canals and distinguishable buildings are used as beacons by our mind.

NON-INCLUSIVE MOTION

Non-inclusive motion are movements which are pleasant to look at and do not require you to activate them. Pleasant visual stimulion is charactarized by having the following three elements:
  • Repetitive
  • Ever-changing
  • Predictable
image: Holon by Jetske Visser & Michiel Martens

MOTOR


MOVEMENT

When a muscle moves, the nervous system is used to transfer information from the body to the brain, overruling the inflammation system which uses the nervous system as well. That is why doctors recommend you to do sports when you are feeling down. Not-moving for too long makes your brain feel sick. Larger movements come with co-ordination. Some activities like cycling on a bicycle require that many calculations, it brings our mind in a state of ecstasy
.
image: BALA by Design Team Enrichers

COGNITION


1. COMMUNICATION

Anything that requires interpretation is a cognitive stimuli. For example having a conversation requires you to interpret language, body language and facial expression of another person.

2. LEARNING

Anything that challenges you is cognition. Anything that required learning is a cognitive stimuli. For example playing a music instrument, speaking another language or skating. 

SOMATOSENSORY


All information perceived with skin is a somatosensory stimuli.
That can be touch, texture, but also humidity and feeling the wind.
Scent and taste are chemical capacities of the skin for sensing
its environment.  
image: Mirabilia
by Alissa+Nienke

CIRCADIAN RHYTHM


Alligning the stimuli your bio rhythm is enriching. There are three bio rhythms discovered:
  • natural light and the melatonin system
  • nutrition
  • social interaction
image: Blue Sky Lamp by Chris Kabel

EE FACTOR


0.
Often highly utilitarian spaces like hospitals, prisons, factories and distribution halls lack a variety of enrichment stimuli







1.
Work environments often rank low on enrichment







2.
The things we like to do are often enriching







3.
Nature has enrichment in omnipresence 
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EE MAPPING


Govert Flint developed a mapping tool to indicate if stimuli are present in an environment.

-3    omnipresent & toxic
-2    present & negative
-1     present & annoying
0     not present
1      present
2     large positive presence
3     omnipresent & positive
















Download EE Map